We’ve covered many smartphone vendors here at AnandTech over the years, but one vendor we never had the chance to have a look at is ZTE, or more precisely, its associate company Nubia. I’ve encountered the vendor’s products at trade shows over the years, but never really took a second look at its models given the vendor was still mainly focused in its home Chinese market.

In our search to find Snapdragon 855 devices and to determine which had the best implementations, the Red Magic 3 certainly wasn’t amongst the line-up of devices I had first thought of. In fact, amongst our readers I’d actually be surprised to hear if there’s any substantial percentage aware of the company, much less about the Red Magic 3’s existence, as the phone’s marketing efforts certainly isn’t comparable to that of bigger brands.

The Red Magic 3 ended up as quite an intriguing device: A gaming-oriented phone design powered by the Snapdragon 855, showcasing a 90Hz OLED screen, and a massive 5000mAh battery. Certainly, that combination alone is more than enough to make the RM3 stand out amongst other devices, and piqued our interest to go and try out the phone.

Nubia Red Magic 3
		Red Magic 3
SoC		Qualcomm Snapdragon 855  1x Kryo 485 (Cortex-A76) @ 2.84GHz 3x Kryo 485 (Cortex-A76) @ 2.42GHz 4x Kryo 485 (Cortex-A55) @ 1.80GHz Adreno 640 @ 585MHz
DRAM		8/12GB LPDDR4X
Display		6.65" AMOLED 2340 x 1080 (19.5:9) 90 Hz
Size	Height	171.7 mm
	Width	78.5 mm
	Depth	9.65 mm
Weight		215 grams
Battery Capacity		5000mAh
Wireless Charging		-
Rear Cameras
	Main	48MP IMX586 0.8µm pixel w/PDAF f/1.7
	Telephoto	-
	Wide	-
	Extra	-
Front Camera		16MP 2.0µm f/2.0
Storage		128 / 256GB UFS 2.1
I/O		USB-C 3.5mm headphone jack
Wireless (local)		802.11ac Wave 2 Wi-Fi Bluetooth 5.0 LE + NFC
IP Rating		none
Other Features		Dual Speakers, Rear fingerprint sensor 2 capacitive trigger buttons It has an actual active cooling fan inside
Dual-SIM		2x nanoSIM
Street Price:		8+128GB: $479 / 479€ 12+256GB: 599€

The Red Magic 3 is one of the few gaming-oriented phones out there. This smartphone category is something quite new to the market, but lately it seems to have seen quite a lot of success, with several vendors now offering their own take on what should be a gaming phone. Making a gaming smartphone however isn’t quite as straightforward as one might think. In terms of hardware, yes the recent devices all have the latest components such as the Snapdragon 855 SoC, however as we’ve seen with attempts from other vendors, the results aren’t always what you’d expect.

The one aspect where the Red Magic 3 does differ from the competition is that it’s currently one of the only smartphones that quite noticeable differs in its hardware design: The inclusion of an active cooling fan inside of the phone is something quite unusual and certainly not something we’ve seen before in the past.

In terms of internals, as mentioned, the phone is powered by the Snapdragon 855 SoC which should offer sufficient performance if given enough thermal headroom to flex its capabilities. The SoC is accompanied by either 8 or 12GB of RAM in 128 or 256GB of UFS 2.1 storage options – so nothing quite out of the ordinary there.

The OLED screen of the Red Magic 3 comes in at a larger 6.65” diagonal and with a “standard” resolution of 2340 x 1080. So far that’s not too special, if it weren’t for the fact that this is also a 90Hz capable display panel. Indeed, this one feature puts the Red Magic 3 in a very small list of high refresh-rate smartphones available in the market. We’ve first reviewed such as phone in the form of the OnePlus 7 Pro, and it’s absolutely a stand-out feature.

The screen design of the phone is quite basic, and that’s a good thing. The symmetric design with regular bezels on both sides allow for dual front-facing speakers which get quite loud. Unfortunately I felt that their quality left something to be desired, especially at volumes above 70%.

The back of the phone showcases the key “gaming” aesthetics you’d expect of a gaming phone, and is achieved by a symmetric triangular design highlights at the top and bottom of the phone. In the middle, we find a vertical LED strip that’s able to pulse in different colours. Personally, I didn’t find this of any use beyond just bragging rights that your phone has RGB, but fortunately it can be turned off. We find a capacitive rear mounted fingerprint sensor, above which lies the internal cooling fan’s air intake grill.

Above this, we find the sole main camera. Nubia here doesn’t attempt any fancy camera configuration and just relies on a traditional single camera. The sensor is yet again the IMX586 model which we’ve found in the vast majority of more budget-oriented devices out there on the market, in combination with an f/1.7 lens. The sensor lacks OIS which is something to consider for low-light captures and video recording.

At the bottom we find a USB-C port along with a speaker grill. The speaker grill is actually still part of the bottom front facing speaker unit, and merely serves to be able to output more of the lower frequencies. Again, while at average volume the sound is ok, above 70% the sound is quite horrible and distorts notably.

The top of the phone is populated by a 3.5mm headphone jack. Yes, you heard that right. In a year where most vendors have dropped the jack, there’s still a few glimmering lights of hope.

The left side of the phone is populated by a game mode switch – much like on other gaming phones this enables for a different application launcher that is styled like a console home screen – more on this later. Next to it we find the dual SIM tray, and in the middle, we find a docking port interface. Nubia offers separate accessories for this, but we weren’t able to test any for this review.

The right side of the phone has the usual power button as well as volume rocket buttons. On the extremities, we find two additional dedicated capacitive buttons which serve as triggers in game mode.

Also on the right side, you’ll find another air vent. This is the air exhaust port for the tiny small internal fan. I was frankly quite surprised the whole thing fit into this rather reasonably thin form-factor. The downside here is that even with the fan at maximum RPM, the actual air volume that’s being moved by the small unit isn’t very meaningful. You can definitely feel the airflow, but it’s very minor and already I had some scepticism about whether it can actually help with the phone’s cooling.

Another hardware advantage of the Red Magic 3 is the fact that it comes with a 5000mAh battery, which isn’t quite something you’d expect from holding the phone. Yes it’s certainly a big phone at 78.5mm wide and 215 grams – but not considerably bigger or heavier than other large sized phones such as say an iPhone Max. The thinner sides of the phone certainly make it much easier to hold than some other phones of this size.

In terms of the game mode – the Red Magic 3’s dedicated launcher here is similar to that of other gaming phones. It will automatically detect most of your installed games and populate it on the carousel-style launch screen, and also giving you the option to add or remove apps. The home screen has a few basic functions such as toggling the cooling fan and the RGB lighting, as call and messaging blocking. There’s an included game recording feature but it’s only limited to three predetermined games.

Here in the profile page is where the Red Magic 3 also hides its screen refresh rate configuration setting, being able to switch between auto, 60Hz and 90Hz. The phone defaults to 90Hz at all times and that’s how we tested it.

When playing games, swiping up from the right/bottom side of the phone gives you your typical gaming style quick controls and status OSDs. These are actually relatively useful, for example the brightness slider and the fan toggle. There’s a screenshot button, and something I hadn’t encountered before in a smartphone a “standby” function; this actually turns off the display whilst actually not putting the phone to sleep and still continuing on content and games. Tapping the screen in this mode gives a preview with the battery percentage as well as a dedicated lock screen which you’ll have to swipe to fully re-enable the screen again. I can only imagine that this mode is meant for games which track game time – so you’d just be idling in the game with the screen off waiting on some cooldown of some sort.

There’s also a performance mode toggle that switches between auto, CPU priority, GPU priority and a “Super” mode which describes itself a using forced maximum performance states. These latter modes I couldn’t discern any operating differences to auto as performance states and temperatures pretty much looked identical between each other.

The touch button function enables your capacitive trigger controls. Here you can map virtual buttons anywhere on the screen and activate them with the hardware buttons. The Red Magic 3 tops this off by not only offering the two side mounted hardware buttons as triggers, but also offering a third button via the rear fingerprint sensor. This actually worked reasonably well and it gives you one additional control that other gaming phones aren’t able to.

One critical issue that I had with the RM3 is that the phone just wouldn’t be able to connect to my WiFi network with WPA2-Personal encryption – seemingly this is a known issue occurring to many users and the only way I was able to connect the phone is by an additional hotspot WiFi network that didn’t use the same encryption standard, something which is just boggling and might be a deal-breaker for many.

System Performance

As part of our Snapdragon 855 device performance overview article, we noted that the Red Magic 3 was actually amongst the top performers out there. Reason for this could be the 90Hz display and correspondingly more aggressively tuned performance configurations of the phone, or simply a more up to date software stack.

Machine Learning Inference Performance

AIMark 3

AIBenchmark 3

AIBenchmark 3 - NNAPI INT8

AIBenchmark 3 - NNAPI FP16

AIBenchmark 3 - NNAPI FP32

GPU Performance

GPU performance of the Red Magic 3 is something I was particularly looking forwards to given it’s the only phone we have that actually has active cooling built in to its hardware design. The small fan has an air intake at the rear of the phone underneath the camera, and exhausts it on the side next to the volume buttons on the right of the phone. The fan can be toggled on and off in the software, and additionally have RPM settings of “auto” based on CPU temperature and maximum RPM. The fan is audible but it’s certainly not loud.

Unfortunately based on my extensive testing with the phone under different scenarios, I just wasn’t able to discern any kind of impact by the fan’s operation. Running the sustained performance tests with the fan on and off showcased a temperature difference of maybe 0.5°C, measured both in terms of peak skin temperature as well as reported by the phone’s gaming OSD temperature metric. I thought that maybe at least if temperature didn’t drop, at least performance would change, but again unfortunately the performance differences measured here were in the realm of measurement variability, differing a maximum of 1-5% in the sustained performance results compared to having the fan off.

The problem here is that he little fan just isn’t able to move enough air to actually make any kind of a difference to the significantly higher thermal envelope of the phone. The tiny amount of hot air coming out of the exhaust just pales compared to what’s radiated out by the whole body of the phone.

Given that there’s no noticeable difference with the fan on or off, there was no point in publishing two sets of performance numbers.

In the Graphics test, the RM3 throttles a little bit more, but it’s still ahead of the majority of other Snapdragon 855 phones out there.

Overall, the Red Magic 3’s sustained performance is quite good, although it’s not quite as outstanding as the Reno 10x’s or the OnePlus 7 Pro’s. On the other hand, the positive about this is that the RM3 doesn’t get nearly as hot as those devices, and while it’s still certainly a warm phone when under full load, it’s still comfortable enough to hold. I think the RM3 here achieves a good balance between performance and thermals.

Display Measurement

The Red Magic 3 features a 2340 x 1080 6.65” OLED screen. At this screen size, the resolution is certainly quite stretched, however for a gaming phone I don’t think that’s too much of a priority, and the 90Hz refresh of the panel certainly makes up for it.

The phone’s software settings are very basic, there’s just a toggle between a Display P3 gamut target and an sRGB target.

We move on to the display calibration and fundamental display measurements of the Red Magic 3 screen. As always, we thank X-Rite and SpecraCal, as our measurements are performed with an X-Rite i1Pro 2 spectrophotometer, with the exception of black levels which are measured with an i1Display Pro colorimeter. Data is collected and examined using SpectraCal's CalMAN software.

 

In terms of maximum brightness, the phone gets an unusual maximum of 455 nits, which is slightly above the regular ~400 of “standard” OLED panels out there in the market. It doesn’t get as bright as newer panel generations and it also lacks a brightness boost function.

 
SpectraCal CalMAN

In terms of greyscale accuracy, the RM3 exhibits quite a colder colour temperature at 7156K. There’s no way to change this in the settings and is essentially what you’re stick with.

I also note that the gamma for the phone is very high and looks like it’s targeting a level of 2.5, coming in close at 2.43.

SpectraCal CalMAN

There’s a noticeable blue-shift as well as darker tones in the greyscale reproduction.

Because of these large divergences, the phone only ends up with a dE2000 of 5.04, among one of the worst results out there.

SpectraCal CalMAN 

In the sRGB saturations test, the RM3 actually seems to do quite well and it’s saturation levels aren’t too bad and it keeps largely to the gamut, albeit the maximum reds and blues are short of the full sRGB gamut. The main issue here is that everything is shifted by the off-target colour temperature.

 

Mainly due to the colour temperature shift, we see the phone only end up with a dE2000 of 3.65 in the sRGB natural setting.

SpectraCal CalMAN 

In the P3 higher gamut mode, the phone’s saturations actually seem to exceed the standard. The higher mid-level saturations are also due to the higher than 2.2 gamma target employed by the Nubia.

Due to the colour temperature shift again and the gamma not being on target, the RM3 only manages a dE2000 of 3.88.

SpectraCal CalMAN

The GMB test isn’t too terrible, but again, colour temperature and gamma are the biggest issues in the inaccuracies.

Overall, the RM3’s colour calibration isn’t too fantastic simply due to the fact that it’s knowingly targeting something different from the norm. The colour temperature shift unfortunately isn’t something you can fix as there’s no dedicated controls for it – and the higher gamma target of 2.5 is also that’s inherent to the vendor’s choice.

While the colour calibration is certainly not par with other flagships, it remains a good screen due to the OLED aspect and simply due to the fact that it’s a 90Hz display.

Battery Life

Camera - Daylight Evaluation

The cameras on the Red Magic 3 are quite straightforward: there’s just one rear module. I’ve heard plenty of times now from some people that they don’t care too much about the cameras on a gaming smartphone, but on the other hand I still think the vast silent majority of users will still put a lot of value to at least have a “good” camera in their phones, even if it doesn’t pretend to be quite as versatile as that of other vendors.

[ Red Magic 3 ] -  [ S10+ (E) ] - [ S10+ (S) ]
[ Xperia 1 ] - [ P30 Pro ] - [ Mi9 ] - [ G8 ]
[ Reno 10x ] - [BlackShark 2 ] - [Pixel 3 ] - [iPhone XS ]

In the first scene, the Red Magic 3 is off to a good start in terms of the amount of detail in the scene. The best comparison here is the Xiaomi Mi9 as well as the OPPO Reno 10x, as both phones use the same IMX586 camera sensor. The RM3 beats both of these competitors in the amount of detail captures as it avoids any unnecessary noise reduction that would blur the scene – especially visible in the leaves on the ground in this scene.

While detail is good, there’s a bit of a lack of contrast which is accentuated by the ever so slightly too bright overall exposure of the photo.

[ Red Magic 3 ] -  [ S10+ (E) ] - [ S10+ (S) ]
[ Xperia 1 ] - [ P30 Pro ] - [ Mi9 ] - [ G8 ]
[ Reno 10x ] [ BlackShark 2 ] - [ Pixel 3 ] - [ iPhone XS ]

In the next shot, the RM3 again does well in terms of detail and is the best amongst the IMX586 phones in this comparison.

The shot is slightly underexposed and there’s a definitive lack of definition in the shadows, something essentially all the phones with this sensor are suffering from.

[ Red Magic 3 ] [ S10+ (E) ] - [ S10+ (S) ]
[ Xperia 1 ] - [ P30 Pro ] - [ Mi9 ] - [G8 ]
[ Reno 10x ] - [ BlackShark 2 ] -  [ BlackShark 2 ] - 
[ Pixel 3 ]

Here we see another excellent showcase of detail, quite above what many phones are able to achieve.

[ Red Magic 3 ] - [ S10+ (E) ] - [ S10+ (S) ]
[ Xperia 1 ] - [ P30 Pro ] - [ Mi9 ] - [G8 ]
[ Reno 10x ] - [ BlackShark 2 ] - [ Pixel 3 ]
[ iPhone XS ]

This shot showcases some of the different HDR algorithms between the phones. There’s visible halos around the power lines on the Red Magic 3 which would be the result of the local tone-mapping of the darker elements against the brighter sky. The foreground was actually overcast by clouds so it shouldn’t be too bright, however I still feel the RM3 is slightly underexposed in this regard.

[ Red Magic 3 ] -  [ S10+ (E) ] - [ S10+ (S) ] - [ Xperia 1 ] - [ P30 Pro ]
[ Mi9 ] - [ G8 ] - [ Reno 10x ] - [ BlackShark 2 ] - [ Pixel 3 ] - [ iPhone XS ]

Indoors again I feel the RM3 is slightly underexposed as it’s lacking any levels above 85%. The image also appears quite contrasty and that’s because of the lack of definition in the shadows, it’s just lacking a more natural dynamic range, and it’s also a bit undersaturated. Details are good, although here in medium light we’re seeing quite a lot more noise compared to the brighter outdoor shots.

Daylight Camera Conclusion

I didn’t have too high expectations for the Red Magic 3’s camera, but it still managed to showcase relatively competitive results. The camera’s handling of details is distinctly different of that of other phones with the same sensor and it ends up most of the time ahead of the competition in this regard.

HDR and exposure were adequate – it certainly wasn’t the best in any regard but it still managed to be competitive. I think here the sensor’s hardware limitations are hard to overcome as I’ve seen similar results in dynamic range by essentially all the IMX586 based phones this year.

Overall, I think the Red Magic 3 is a quite good daylight camera, as long as you’re not having overly too high expectations.

Camera - Low Light Evaluation

We’ve had the Reno 10x in camera comparisons in previous articles, but as mentioned in the introduction of the device, Oppo was able to update its software over the last few months. The one area where there has been significant advancements in is in terms of low-light photograph and an apparent new night mode.

Previously, the original Night mode on the Reno was a dedicated mode one had to select to use. In newer firmware updates, the Reno now will automatically select a new kind of night mode in lower light conditions, and this is characterised by the camera app doing three quick shutter animations and sounds. We’ll see how this has changed, and how the new mode compares against the competition.

[ Red Magic 3 ] - [ S10+ (E) ] - [ S10+ (S) ]
[ Xperia 1 ] - [ P30 Pro ] - [ Mi9 ] 
[ G8 ] - [ Reno 10x ] -  [ BlackShark 2 ] - [ Pixel 3 ]

In the first shot, we see the RM3 perform significantly better than the Mi9 or BS2. The phone is able to capture a lot more light than aforementioned competitors and is able to do this without major issues in terms of detail loss. It’s certainly not competitive against other phones with OIS and better camera sensors, but it’s able to hold on its own and produces an at least useable shot.

[ Red Magic 3 ] - [ S10+ (E) ] - [ S10+ (S) ]
[ Xperia 1 ] - [ P30 Pro ] - [ Mi9 ]
[ G8 ] - [ Reno 10x ] -  [ BlackShark 2 ] - [ Pixel 3 ]

We generally see the same results in the next scene. The RM3 doesn’t do well with the very fine details such as the road texture, but larger details still remain discernible, unlike the fuzzy mess on the Xiaomi phones.

[ Red Magic 3 ] - [ S10+ (E) ] - [ S10+ (S) ]
[ Xperia 1 ] - [ P30 Pro ] - [ Mi9 ] 
[ G8 ] - [ Reno 10x ] [ BlackShark 2 ] - [ Pixel 3 ]

The RM3 here does again a quite surprisingly passable job of capturing the scene, it doesn’t do too well in terms of textures but man does it absolutely destroy the Mi9 and BS2 in an apples-to-apples comparison between the same hardware configurations.

[ Red Magic 3 ] - [ S10+ (E) ] - [ S10+ (S) ]
[ Xperia 1 ] - [ P30 Pro ] - [ Mi9 ] 
[ G8 ] - [ Reno 10x ] -  [ BlackShark 2 ] - [ Pixel 3 ]

Going lower in light, we’re starting to hit the limits of the sensor and without any dedicated computational photography night mode, the phone isn’t able to produce useable pictures anymore.

[ Red Magic 3 ] - [ S10+ (E) ] - [ S10+ (S) ]
[ Xperia 1 ] - [ P30 Pro ] - [ Mi9 ]
[ G8 ] - [ Reno 10x ] [ BlackShark 2 ] - [ Pixel 3 ]

In this dimly lit indoor shot, the phone’s barely able to pick up much of the scene.

Low-light Conclusion - Passably Bad

The bar were low for the RM3’s low-light performance as I didn’t have any expectations after having reviewed other phones with the same sensor and a lack of OIS. Surprisingly enough, it was able to massively outperform the Xiaomi phones in low-light even though they all share almost identical hardware, pointing out just how important software algorithms are.

While the RM3 does produce passable pictures in all but the most extreme low-light pictures, it’s still overall quite behind other flagship devices which employ OIS, better sensors, or have computational photography magic backing them up.

Conclusion & End Remarks

The Red Magic 3 is only the second real gaming phone we’ve come to review, and frankly I didn’t really know what to expect from the phone as we’ve never had a Nubia device in-house.

The phone’s design certainly passes the criteria of achieving a “gaming” look. Particularly in the crimson red variant we reviewed today actually looks quite great in person, and Nubia doesn’t go too much overboard in terms of the aesthetics.

I think my favourite thing about the phone is that although it’s a quite large 78.5mm wide as well as 215 grams, due to its thinner and rounder edges it’s a lot more comfortable to hold than other devices of this footprint, so that’s a definitive ergonomic win.

Performance of the Red Magic 3 was excellent, and out there amongst the best Snapdragon 855 devices.

One of the big features of the phone is the fact that this is one of the rare (only?) devices which actually employ an active cooling fan on the inside. There’s a rear intake grill underneath the camera with the exhaust coming out the right side of the phone near the volume buttons. Whilst I was excited to test this feature, the hype quickly fizzled out as the results did not end up being particularly promising, and in effect I wasn’t able to measure any meaningful impact on the temperatures or performance of the phone. The little fan is just too small to move any meaningful amount of air and compared to the heat that the phone passively radiates out, it doesn’t help too much in terms of improving the thermals of the phone.

Nevertheless, the gaming performance of the Red Magic 3 is still plenty good. It’s not quite the no throttling at all scenario showcased by the Reno 10x or the OnePlus 7 Pro, but at least it manages to be amongst the best S855 devices out there all while maintaining quite reasonable device temperatures.

The highlight of the Red Magic 3 is the screen. It’s not very colour accurate nor is it very dense, but it’s a 90Hz panel and that alone should make it stand out amongst the competition. As with the OnePlus 90Hz devices out there, it represents a unique feature that can carry a device on its own, and I think it also does so on the Red Magic 3. The only practical issue with the combination of gaming phones and high refresh rate displays is the fact that there’s still a ton of games out there that are just FPS capped to lower refresh rates, but this is more of an ecosystem problem rather than an issue of the RM3 itself.

The best thing about the 90Hz display is the fact that it has little to no impact on the device’s battery life. This isn’t because it’s some much more efficient display, but it’s simply because Nubia equipped the Red Magic 3 with a very large 5000mAh battery.

In terms of cameras, the RM3 is pretty simplistic. It only has a single main rear unit. The module and its resulting captures actually surprised me: it showcased amongst the best detail retentions in daylight shots among any smartphone. It doesn’t quite have the dynamic range of other flagship devices with better hardware, but it’s still an overall good shooter.

In low-light, the lack of OIS is limiting the phone in not being any better than it is. I didn’t have large expectations here and frankly maybe that’s why it surprised me when it massively outperformed the Mi9 and BS2 featuring the same camera hardware. It made passable pictures which are useable, but certainly not competitive to any other phone out there with better hardware or proper night mode photography software processing.

Finally, the gaming features of the phone are relatively in-line with what we’ve seen of the limited amount of gaming phones out there. I think the only worthwhile and practical addition here that does augment the experience is the “Touch Button” functionality that enables one to map the two additional capacitive hardware buttons of the phone, plus the rear fingerprint sensor to three UI functions in a game, giving you essentially three additional control buttons for games.

Overall, I think the best features of the Red Magic 3 remains its 90Hz screen as well as its very large battery capacity. Its performance is also among the best S855 out there. While it’s lacking some other high-end flagship features, particularly in terms of camera versatility, I think it’s still a reasonable package given that the phone retails for only $/€479.